Speed
by BobLoblawLawBlog
Summary: I asked for smut prompts on Tumblr, and my followers delivered. I'm planning to collect them all here.
1. Speed

**Speed**

(For the anon who requested police car smut)

* * *

Korra white knuckled the steering wheel with one hand while the other wiped a scalding tear from her eye. Her blood was as hot as the engine roaring beneath the hood. She forced herself to listen to it, observing the precise pitch of its steady whine just like Asami had taught her. _Then clutch, hand on the shifter, to the right and down, next gear, good. _

She'd never be as good as her friend, wasn't even in the business of trying. She couldn't take turns or do a controlled skid. There was exactly one thing Korra could do behind the wheel, and that was go really, _really_ fast on a straight stretch of highway, the wind tearing at her skin and hair, driving water from her eyes because she refused to wear goggles. And so far she had found it was the third best thing to do—next to burning Air Temple Island down or flooding it—after an infuriating day of practice and _not so aggressive, Korra, _and _you're just not trying. _

If asked, she couldn't have put her finger precisely on the reasons why Tenzin's chiding made her so irate lately. He was right. She was aggressive. But what he'd never understand was that she _needed_ to be aggressive, needed to feel like the elements bent to her will again after they'd been so brutally taken from her just a few months prior, when she hadn't felt like herself in her own body. She couldn't find the words to tell him this, and so she just got angry. And lately when she got angry, she took the ridiculous coupe Tarrlok had given her and drove until she was outside the city, burning up a stretch of road that led southeast along the coastline.

The dark highway unfolded beneath the headlights and met an equally black sky at the horizon. She knew she should slow down, that the risk of losing control rose exponentially as her speed increased, but she couldn't make herself stop. Sometimes, she felt like she was driving to escape herself.

With her eyes fixed on where the center line vanished into the night, she didn't even notice the red and blue lights gaining on her very gradually in the rear view mirror until they were almost on top of her. And when she finally did see them, she punched the steering wheel hard enough to make the horn honk. The police cruiser blared its siren in response, and taking deep breaths in and out, she slowly depressed the brake pedal, shifting through all the gears as the Satomobile slowed and she guided it to the embankment.

According to the law, you were supposed to stay in your car if you were pulled over. But Korra felt like bugs were crawling over her skin inside her pants, so she got out, and made to stomp over to the cop's cruiser and let him know _just who she was _and it wasn't like she was going _that fast _and besides _there isn't another soul out here. _Because that had _always _worked so well for her in the past.

In the glare of the headlights, the silhouette of a person appeared. "Stay right where you're standing!" it called. But she didn't listen. "Stop it right there!" it tried again.

Her further disobedience drew a warning shot. The fireball glanced by her, and she thought about sending one in the opposite direction just to keep things even. She was spoiling for a fight, and a part of her didn't mind spending a night in the slammer if it meant she got to blow off a little steam.

Instead, she just said, "Hold up. It's me. It's the Avatar."

"Korra?" the voice said, and she recognized it now.

"Mako?" She continued walking forward, and her boyfriend's face finally came into focus, surprise registering in the tilt of his eyebrows just underneath his hat. "What are you _doing_ here?" she asked incredulously. "Are we even _in _Republic City anymore?" The stretch of road they were on looked desolate, the black shapes of trees looming over the pavement on either side.

"Traffic duty, obviously, and I've been chasing you down for a _while_." His voice was a little flinty. Korra swept a loose piece of hair off her face, settled her hands on her hips and waited, expecting a fight. "Are you ok?" he just asked instead, and she blinked a couple of times, refusing to let the tears come.

"Just a shitty day," she replied.

"Yeah, well, me too."

"I thought you usually rode a motorcycle," she observed, gesturing toward the shiny black cruiser purring idly behind them.

"Depends on the day," he said, removing his hat and looking back at it. "It is new, though."

His hair was sticking up in all directions, a tiny bit of perspiration forming on his brow, and she had an urge to run her nails through it, to feel it prick against her fingertips with his face nuzzling between her breasts. The heat that had fueled her rage was finding a new outlet now, dispersing throughout her body and coiling tight in the muscles of her thighs.

"So, are you gonna arrest me now?" She made her best attempt to appear winsome and reached out a hand to play with the buttons on his coat.

"I _should_," he said. "Just tell me you don't do this sort of thing often."

She felt a smile creep across her face and placed her palms flat against his chest, looking up at him as his hands instinctively rose to her waist. "Not often," she said.

"I thought you were getting rid of that thing anyway."

"I keep putting it off." She let her face creep closer to his until she could just press her lips against his chin, then the corner of his jaw, then his pulse. He sighed a little as she did this, but he also stiffened. He was always weird about making out with her while on duty.

"I might still write you a ticket," he said just before she brushed her mouth against his, and she backed off.

"You're not serious," she said.

He raised an eyebrow cockily and pulled away, moving back toward the driver's seat of his Satomobile and reaching through the open window to grab a ticket pad. She folded her arms and tried to resist the urge to swat it out of his hands, waiting to see if he was really going to follow through.

"Let's see," he said. "Speeding. Reckless driving."

"Seriously?" she interrupted. "You think I won't just burn that thing to ashes?"

"Assaulting a police officer…"

She shoved him in the shoulder so that his back collided with the door. He didn't stop. "But first, I'll need your information. Now Pain in the Ass is spelled…"

He was fucking with her, and she sort of loved it, so she cut him off, grabbing him by the belt and pulling him toward her. It took him half a second to drop the pad through the window on the front seat before running a hand through her tangled hair as she crashed into him. His tongue found its way into her mouth, and she savored his fierceness.

"You scare me to death sometimes," he whispered as his nose brushed the tendons of her neck, finding a spot for him to bite down on as she pressed him harder against the vehicle.

"I love you too," she said, her breath catching when his teeth dug in. "When's your shift over?"

"2:00 am," he said.

"What time is it now?"

He broke away from her to glance at the dashboard clock, one hand still on her waist. "2:03," he said, and she pulled him by the shirt back toward her. As she did so, she reached around him to flick off the headlights, leaving them covered in the dark of night, the engine still idling, muffling the sounds their lips made as they popped against skin, the groans that originated deep inside their bellies and vibrated outwards.

As his hands ran over her breasts and down her buttocks, she pressed her hips harder against his and enjoyed the strangled sound that erupted from his throat.

"Come back with me to my place," he said, gripping her backside.

She thought about the length of the drive to his apartment and felt slightly frantic. The throb between her legs set off a sympathetic ache that she could feel all the way down in her toes. "I don't know if I can wait that long," she said. "And I doubt you can either." To prove her point, she slipped a hand down his trousers and teased his cock with the tips of her fingers, feeling it flex at her touch, the soft head already a little sticky.

He gripped her wrist to keep her from going further, and she laughed softly, loving the loss of control when he turned her around and pushed herbody against the metal. She lifted one leg to his waist to bring him closer when she felt her other foot leave the ground and his crotch nudging against hers.

When Korra realized that in all likelihood they were going to fuck in or around or perhaps against his Satomobile, it was equal parts thrilling and terrifying. They'd spent three nights together at that point, and except for that one time when they'd tumbled onto the floor, they'd never left the comforting safety of his bed. But she'd fantasized about doing it under more risky circumstances before, not that she thought he'd ever go for it. There was this storage closet at the station that she'd pictured shoving him into once or twice. And there were secluded spots on Air Temple Island where the grass was soft and acolytes were unlikely to wander by. But a Satomobile had been slowly making its way to the top of her list. That it would be a police cruiser made it that much more delicious. And all she had to do now was figure out exactly how she wanted him.

As if he could read her thoughts, he rubbed against her a little more firmly and asked, "Front seat or back?" She noticed that "out here" wasn't on the menu. The night air was cold, and so was the metal frame of the door. "Back," she decided, and he gently set her on the ground. Breathing shakily, he opened the back door and gestured for her to get in.

"You first," she said, the picture in her head of him stretched out awkwardly underneath her causing her to bite back a smile. He cocked an eyebrow and climbed inside, his head ducking as he folded his long body into the small space. She kicked her boots off and tossed them onto the floor just before he grabbed her by the hand and pulled her inside, where she straddled him over the near seat, her head nearly bumping against the ceiling. With one hand he cupped the back of her neck and crushed her mouth against his and closed the door with the other. The quiet humming of the Satomobile enveloped them, the warmth from the heater a little more comfortable than the nighttime chill.

Korra tried to get her pants and underwear off, but it was a clumsy effort. When one leg came free, she kicked the back of the driver's seat so hard it bent forward. "Sorry," she whispered, but he caught her apology with his lips and tongue, and she immediately got to work on his belt and the buttons on his pants.

"I want to taste you first," he groaned, and she laughed in his face a little, because it was his second favorite part of love-making, but seriously, _how. _

"Lie down," she said, a plan formulating inside her head. It was a tough order to obey. His lanky body was an extremely poor fit, and he had to pull his knees in to be able to lay his head on the seat. She helped him off with his jacket and wadded it up to serve as a pillow. "Comfortable?" she asked, and he gripped her bare ass in both hands and pulled her up so that her knees were all the way up to his armpits. Leaning slightly forward to keep her head from hitting the ceiling, she positioned herself above his mouth.

"Will this work?" she asked, and in answer, she felt his fingers part her flesh. His head lifted just slightly, and his tongue reached out to taste her slowly, tentatively, and then with more confidence.

"Perfect," he whispered, and his hot breath puffed against her sensitive skin. She braced herself with one hand on the window, knowing it would leave a greasy mark, the other in his hair, helping him find the places where she needed him. His tongue explored inside of her, thrusting as deep as it would go, his hands bracing her hips, a thumb coming forward to rub against her clit.

Pricks of hot and cold formed along her flesh, and sweat was creeping down the back of her neck. Her balance was precarious, and her legs started to shake a little bit as her arousal sharpened to a knife's edge. Her palm got sweaty, and she felt it slide against the window, leaving a streak in the condensation that had begun to form. He held her steady, strong hands digging against her hipbones until it almost hurt, and then she was almost there and almost sure she wouldn't be able to take it another second.

Taking the hand that was in his hair, she pushed his face away from her body a bit and broke out of his grip, shimmying downward so that she could pull his cock out of his pants.

Pressing the curves of her torso against his, she hovered over his messy face and pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead. "I'm going to fuck you now," she said, the brassiness in her voice surprising even herself. His eyes fluttered shut, and he groaned her name loud and long as she gripped him and lowered herself down onto him, biting her lip and whimpering slightly at the fullness, the friction, realizing she'd have to be careful since they were playing without a safety net.

It was different, a little more rough, a little less smooth, the feel of him thrusting back against her a little more intense, deliciously unsustainable. She pulled herself nearly all the way off and then slammed back onto him half a dozen times, fingernails running up underneath his rumpled shirt to rake down his chest, and then the tension in her broke, and she remembered that in here, she didn't have to stifle the scream.

"Korra," he groaned desperately, and she pulled herself off him, taking his dick in her hand like he'd shown her and pumping once, twice, three times. His hand came to rest over hers as he burst, his climax spilling through the gaps in their fingers.

Still breathing hard, he sat up a little with her still straddling him and removed his uniform shirt, using it to clean them both off before balling it up and tossing it in the front seat and then gathering her against his chest to bask in the sticky warmth. Her legs were still bare, and he massaged the skin on her thigh, feeling the fine hairs rise a little bit under the pads of his fingers.

"Well, I'm not going to arrest you, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist on driving you home," he said, pressing his lips against her hairline.

"Drive me home or _take _me home?" she asked.

"I'm fine with either. I'll bring you back to pick up your car later tomorrow."

"You mean _today._"

"Whenever."

She lifted herself off him and awkwardly shimmied into her pants before opening the door. With her boots in one hand, she walked barefoot to the front passenger side and let herself in. When he sat down in the driver's seat next to her, she reached over and let her left hand run aggressively down his thigh.

"You'd better hurry," she said, and the tires spun out just a little bit as he accelerated forward, flipped a U turn, and sped on back to the city in the reckless hours of early morning.


	2. Cold Water

**Cold Water**

Note: Combining anonymous requests for striptease and foodplay (I think this sort of qualifies)

* * *

Korra didn't know how people lived like this. Growing up in the South Pole, the weather rarely got warm enough to justify removing her parka, but here, the mercury in the thermometer could climb all the way up past 35,* and it seemed possible that she might boil inside her own skin. The air was stagnant, windless and sticky, and she quickly grew tired of stretching out on the training platform. She'd been thrown out of the meditation pavilion because _it's for meditating not for lying around_, so she offered an excuse about glider practice and made her way across the bay—which shone white in the glare of the mid-day sun—and tried to find refuge in the shady places in the park.

Every bench was occupied by people fanning themselves and sipping bottles of berry colored soda. She searched her pockets for money and came up empty, having to satisfy herself by stretching out in the grass under a tree. She still couldn't get comfortable. The grass stuck to the back of her sweaty neck and tickled the backs of her arms. The stream looked inviting, but she didn't feel like being chased away by park police. Not _again_, anyway.

She closed her eyes and tried to relax, blowing at the strands of hair that stuck to her face. And then the clock tower chimed three o'clock and she realized that her boyfriend was probably home, and she could go torture him for a little while. Plus, he had a freezer.

By the time she reached the boys' apartment, her shirt was plastered to her body, her sweat creating a kind of vacuum seal that dragged it back against her flesh every time she tried to pull it away. She let herself into the apartment, not even bothering to knock, and made a beeline from the door to the icebox, which she opened wide, letting the cold air pool around her and raise goosebumps on her arms.

"I am not, in fact, the heir to a diamond mine, so I'll thank you to keep that thing closed," said Mako, who was sitting on the sofa in an undershirt and boxers, paperwork spread out in front of him on the coffee table.

"Hey yourself," she responded, turning around with a mischievous grin.

"You'd never know you were a water bender," he teased, looking up from his work to watch her.

"Everything melts as soon as I freeze it. It's too much work to keep things cold." She peeked into the freezer section and drew out the rubber ice tray.** They were empty. She turned to face Mako and pouted. He laughed and jangled a glass full of ice water at her.

"Least you could do is fill it back up again," she said, turning the sink on with one hand and sticking the tray underneath the stream.

He chuckled at her again because he'd always been baffled and amused by how much she loved the ice cubes. _There's no way I can get them this perfect on my own_, she'd said. But what she never said was that before Republic City, she'd never even _seen _a mechanical icebox before. At the poles, they didn't need them.

When the trays filled, she put her hand over the top and froze the water solid before twisting the rubber and watching the perfect cubes fall from their little compartments into a bowl. She popped one into her mouth and froze another set, shoving it back into the freezer. For later.

"Itttthh Buh uuum?" She slurped the melting liquid that formed deliciously around the cube back into her mouth as it dared to escape.

"I'm sorry?" he asked, cocking an eyebrow high and to the right.

She spit the cube into her hand gracelessly. "Is Bolin home?"

"No, something about spending the whole day in the arena pool."

"Uuuuuggghhh," she said. "I wish we'd never quit."

"We have adult jobs now."

"Speak for yourself," she said, and she shoved the cube back into her mouth before grabbing the hem of her shirt and rolling it up her torso, leaving her abdomen exposed to what could scarcely be called a breeze moving in from the open window.

He watched. And she saw him watching. The square cube in her mouth made it impossible for her to really smile, so what appeared on her face was more like a grimace.

This time he really laughed at her. "You can't wear all that shit in weather like this. Don't you have any summer clothes?"

She plucked the cube out of her mouth again and slurped. "Yeah, they're the same as my winter ones except I take off the parka."

"Well, you're gonna have to adapt if you want to live amongst the civilized here, babe."

"You call _this _civilized?" Taking the cube between her fingers, she rubbed it against the pulse points on her neck, wincing slightly at the freezing chill before sighing into the relief.

"All _I _hear is that you want me to take my clothes off," she taunted, using one hand to pull her shirt up a little higher, revealing the white outline of her sweat-soaked bindings.

"As long as you do it slowly," he teased back, and she gasped in mock surprise.

"_Well_, Officer. I don't know where you get such ideas." She drew each word out and gestured histrionically, a hand clutching at her chest before pulling her shirt off over her head.

"Slower than that," he said, and this time he was looking at her so hard it almost seemed like a challenge.

Korra smirked and popped the ice cube back in her mouth. Then she slowly lowered her hands to her wrap, which she untied as deliberately and languidly as possible before kicking off her boots.

"And now the good stuff," he said, and his smile swung cockily to one side.

She raised her eyebrow in response and walked sultrily over to him, her hips swaying lazily as she went. She placed herself between him and the coffee table and pulled the ice cube between her two fingers again. The saw the lump in his throat bob as he swallowed. "Only if you're going to help me cool off," she whispered. And with the cube she drew a line of cold water down her stomach from the lower part of her bindings to the top of her pants.

He didn't have to be told what to do. Leaning forward, he gripped her hips and licked straight upward, retracing the cube's path and tasting the salt on her skin. Then he blew against it, and she sighed a little bit as her skin pricked with pleasure. It was too hot for sex, but she could live with whatever this nonsense was for now.

Popping the cube back in her mouth, she leaned down to kiss him deeply, pushing it against his lips and transferring it to him with her tongue. His hands crept up her thighs—sweltering inside her pants—to her waist and then to the white bandages that covered her breasts.

"Tay dezh uh," he said. She giggled at him but didn't need to ask for a translation. Her fingers found the knot and worked it free, letting the bindings unspool around her waist and fall to the ground. He pulled her forward and placed kisses against her right breast, pushing the cube out between his lips so that he could trace lazy patterns with it, running it over her nipple and watching it harden. The ice had turned to a sliver that he pressed against her with the flat of his tongue until it melted into oblivion, and by then she was trembling against his hands, her skin freezing and burning all at once, her arousal dull but insistent between her legs.

Pushing away from him, she walked back over to the counter, where the bowl full of sweating ice cubes was still sitting. She picked it up and carried it back to the coffee table, setting it down and backing up just outside his reach before hooking her fingers into the waistband of her pants. "Should I take these off?" she asked, her voice catching a little.

His eyes were glazed, lascivious, and he nodded, palming at the lazy erection inside his boxer shorts. "You can touch yourself if you want," she said softly, feeling a different kind of heat burning her ears as the words left her mouth. She watched as looked at her searchingly for a second. Then he pushed aside the waistband of his boxers and drew his cock out, hard but not quite hard enough. His hand gripped it loosely as he watched her, and she was spurred on by the expectancy in his gaze.

Her skin felt like it was blistering inside her pants, but she forced herself to remove them slowly, inching them down over the blades of her hips, where the line of her underwear cut across the gentle curve of her belly. Then the tops of her thighs appeared, a few hairs peeking out from under the white cotton that still covered her. She pressed her palms flat against her legs as she forced the trousers downward, feeling the bulge and swell of her own muscles beneath her hands.

A drop of sweat tracked down Mako's face and neck and the followed the line of his collar bone. She stepped back toward him and watched his face, flushed and excited, as he drank her in with his eyes. With a hand reaching toward the back of the couch, she leaned over him, softly kissing at the new droplets that formed near his hairline. His fingers moved forward to trace her body again, and she reached down with one hand to run her fingers lightly over the silky head of his penis. If it hadn't been so damn hot, she'd have straddled him right there and rode him until he broke.

But the heat made her languid and receptive, and she let him push her back by the hips a little bit before reaching around her and taking another cube between his fingers. With one hand gripping her ass, he used the ice to trace another cold circle around her belly button, letting the water pool and gather there, mixing with her sweat so that he could lean forward to lap it up with his tongue. She threaded her hands through his damp hair and felt him use the ice next to trace the lines of her underwear, first the one along her stomach and then at the tops of her legs. Her skin pricked wherever it went, responding to the cold and then to the feel of his lips as he kissed her right where her long legs joined. He ran icy tracks with his fingers along her upper thighs, reaching all the way around to grasp her buttocks and pull her closer to him.

She groaned into his touch, letting the sensations wrap around her and shut off the part of her brain that told her she'd never survive this heat wave. And then to her surprise and delight, he took the ice cube and pressed it delicately against her sex so that she could feel the delicious cold against her clit even through her underwear.

"Now take these off," he said, tugging at the cotton. This time he helped, and with cold fingers that sent shockwaves of pleasure spiraling up her spine, he explored her, pushing her open and sliding one long digit inside her up to the first knuckle.

Her mouth fell open in a loud moan as he put the ice back into his mouth with the other hand and continued to move it across her hips and abdomen and breasts, thrusting in and out of her with his fingers as she rocked gently to the rhythm he established. When she came, it was with a gasp and a sigh rather than a scream, with shivers rather than convulsions, as if her body and his knew precisely what she could handle under the sweltering conditions.

Taking his head in her hands, she crushed her mouth onto hers, tasting the last remnants of cold water on his tongue. When she pulled away, she whispered, "You know, I think I might need a shower," wondering why she hadn't thought of it earlier. And with a hand she led him away to find further relief in the slick press of their bodies under the soothing deluge of her element.

* * *

*Celsius, folks.

**I really try to avoid anachronism. So I was delighted to find out that rubber ice cube trays were invented in 1928.


	3. Proof of Life

**Proof of Life**

Note: Based on a prompt from Tumblr user girlwiththeglow-(Post-breakup) Korra and the Krew rescue Mako from a kidnapping plot by earthbenders, and Korra was going out of her mind with worry and rage of even the thought of losing him. Later that night, Korra goes to see him and they talk for the first time in a long while since the break-up, and they both break because they miss each other and angsty, love-making ensues.

* * *

Mako was kept awake for three days straight, and when they loaded him into an ambulance, too weak to stand, he fell asleep immediately. And for the next thirty-six hours, he was conscious only for seconds at a time, just enough to register a face and a voice and sometimes individual words that invariably degenerated into nonsense. Once or twice, he was sure he saw _her _face, tear-stained with purple marks under her eyes. And then it was his brother's face and then it was a healer. _You're dehydrated and exhausted and the square root of sixteen is fish…_

…

Korra had not rested for a second after the explosion that left him and three others trapped behind the barricade, and she continued to stay awake the longer he slept, occasionally drifting off in a chair near his hospital bed, her knees drawn up to her chin. Then she would tilt to one side, and the loss of balance would jerk her awake, sometimes with a sound that came from some place primal inside of her. And she would look to see if she had disturbed him, ready to bolt if she needed to. But his eyes were still closed, as were the eyes of the three other captured and recently rescued members of the mission on the ward.

…

When he was cleared to go home, he signed his name at the desk and greeted the friends who were waiting to carry him off. One face, one smile was missing. "Where's…"

"We sent her home," said Asami, and the look on both her and Bolin's faces told him it was unwise to keep pressing.

…

At her apartment, Korra stared into the darkness and waited for relief that wouldn't come.

He'd gone because she'd asked, even though she had no right to ask anything of him anymore. He was loyal and brave and oh so _stupid_, and she could be so damn _selfish_. And even though he was safe now, she was sure he judged her.

_If you're caught behind enemy lines, we won't come for you. If the mission is exposed, it could throw us into war with the Earth Kingdom. _

They knew the risks. There was an agreement, and then she broke it. She'd overstepped again.

She reached over to the night stand for the sedative they'd given her at the hospital. And within minutes, oblivion came.

…

For the first two days back home, he resisted the urge to ask where she was. Because part of him was still trying to figure out why he was alive and at home and not still in a rat-infested cell where the lights were perpetually kept on and metal pots were banged against the bars to ensure they would never get to sleep. To keep them pliable for questioning.

The stink of it was still in his nostrils, and a couple of times a night, he got up to vomit.

He'd gone because someone had to, and he was as good as any other.

But what he wanted to tell her—was afraid to tell her—was that in order to keep it together, he'd thought of her. He'd thought of Bolin, who no longer needed him. And he'd thought of all the friends he'd made in the last two years. But mostly he had thought of _her_. He'd thought of the first time he met her, the first time they'd kissed. He thought about fighting with her and about the feel of lying skin to skin. And he'd thought of that one time when she'd been taken and he had nearly fallen apart. And he wondered if she would feel that same sort of panic when she realized he was gone.

…

On the third day, he was at her door, needy and anxious and still exhausted. When she opened it, she looked like a person who'd taken a shower and gotten right back into bed. Her hair was down around her shoulders, and she wore a robe that looked too big for her, saggy around the waist.

The sight of him hurt because she was expecting him to yell at her. She set her jaw and braced herself for it, welcomed it. She was tired, and her defenses were down, and this time she swore she would just take what was coming. Because he was alive, and that was all she had wanted.

But instead he didn't speak. He just wrapped her in his arms. She was stiff at first, her hands pressed against his chest like she might push him away. But then they clutched at his shirt, and he pulled her tighter against him. Her head was buried in his chest, and he kissed the top of her head, inhaling the scent of her hair, which smelled clean and felt soft against his nose.

"I messed up," she whispered, distilling the self-blame she'd been battling for almost a solid week into one bland understatement.

"If that's what you call messing up," he teased. "Then I'd like to see what your version of success looks like." He took her by the shoulders and forced her to look at him. "You got us all back, ok?"

"I shouldn't have let you get captured in the first place. And I ignored the General. I took his men right out from under his nose, and I practically forced them to disobey. I exposed what we were doing. I endangered…"

"It's over, ok?" he interrupted, and he walked over to her icebox and took out box after box of leftovers, looking for something that was still edible.

"I guess I thought you'd be mad at me," she said, running a hand through her hair.

He had nothing to say to that. It stung a little that she thought him that petty, that she thought that after she'd risked everything to rescue him he'd have the nerve to question her methods_. _So instead of answering, he took out a box of noodles and a tub of broth and dumped it all in a deep pan.

"I'm not hungry," she said, watching him.

"What makes you think this is for you?" he said, trying to provoke a smile.

She blushed a little and snorted. "Well, help yourself then."

Korra watched him as he took two dirty bowls from the counter and cleaned them in the sink. This was precisely what he used to do when she was hung over. And it felt strange and inappropriate that he still insisted on taking care of her in these circumstances.

"You're too hard on yourself," he said.

"I have good reasons to be." She came and stood next to him and found herself falling into an old habit, resting her head against his shoulder while he cooked, tracking the swirl of the spoon as it agitated the broth.

"You need to remember that everyone close to you makes choices. They follow you because they want to. Because they _love _you."

She tilted her head up and found that he was looking at her intensely, and something inside of her got tight. The things she shouldn't say were lingering close to the surface, nestled just underneath her tongue.

"When it was over, someone asked me," she started, her voice just above a whisper. "If I'd have done what I did if it had been anyone else but you." Her brow crinkled, and tears stung the corners of her eyes. "And Mako, I didn't have an answer. Because I'm not sure that I would have."

He wanted to tell her that it was an unfair question, that of _course _she would have, but it wouldn't have helped. It was a terrible thing she had just said. Terrible and wonderful, and he wouldn't let her take it back. He wanted to let it hang between them so that he could keep it for himself. When he slipped an arm around her waist, he felt her lean into him slightly. Dipping his head, he pressed his lips to the bridge of her nose and then to the corner of her mouth. Her lips parted, and he slipped between them.

It was gentle at first until it wasn't. Her kisses turned feral, and he pushed aside the hem of her robe to confirm that she was naked underneath, his hand sliding up her leg as her moan vibrated against his mouth.

"Don't do me any favors," she whispered, pulling away slightly, her voice high and desperate. "You don't owe me anything."

He lifted her onto the counter and brought her legs around his waist. The sash on her robe surrendered, leaving the full, rich expanse of her body open for him to explore.

"This isn't a debt I'm paying," he breathed against her ear. "I couldn't think of anything _but _you while I was in there."

Without speaking, she roughly removed his belt and pushed his pants down with her toes. "I need you in me _right now_." The last two words were breathy and edged with despair.

There was no buildup. He pushed the tip of himself inside her, and it hurt in all the right ways. The soup simmered away on the stove, forgotten.

She almost cried as he moved inside her, bracing her hips with his hands and sighing each time their bodies met. Her orgasm took her almost completely by surprise, coiling up inside of her and releasing the instant his pace increased and his thumb found its way to her clit.

He stopped thrusting when he felt it happen and just pulled her against him, raining kisses on her head and face and shoulders, a memory finding its way to the front of his thoughts and begging to be spoken.

"Why are you stopping?" she asked when he slipped out of her, his cock still hard.

"I'm not stopping," he said. "I'm just not ready for it to be over."

He switched off the burner before picking her up off the counter and carrying her to her bedroom, where they both stripped completely bare. Coming to rest between her thighs, he kissed her softly again and said what had occurred to him during their tryst on the counter. "You _did _do something like that for someone else. For your tribe and your family. When Unalaq invaded. At least you _tried._"

"And you broke up with me because of it." Or at least that was the version she'd been telling herself.

He was stung because she was right and she was wrong all at the same time. "That's not why," he whispered, and it was only half a lie.

She didn't answer, because there was no way to fully unpack what had driven them apart, not after so much time. They'd disagreed, but what had hurt herthe most was the feeling that he wasn't on her side, and what had hurt him was the fact that she didn't believe him when he said he was.

"You're a good person," he said, finding a hand to hold and looking her dead in the eyes. "And I'm just lucky that you are willing to abandon reason and dignity for my sake."

She laughed at that just a little bit. "And nearly cause an international incident."

"And that."

Her face relaxed, like the weight of the world had shifted just slightly. Threading her fingers through his hair, she pulled his face into a kiss, tongue slipping past his teeth. He surrendered to it, moving his hips forward and letting his slightly softened erection brush against her sex in case she still wanted him.

She did. Pushing with her hips, she flipped them over. Hovering over him, she gently wrapped her hand around his shaft to get him ready for her again. He grabbed her by the wrist and brought her palm to his mouth, licking it so that she could work him better. As she did so, he pressed his middle finger inside her and drew her wetness up to her clit, rubbing lazy circles there until she slapped his hand away, positioned herself above him, and sank down, taking him in slowly. With her hands braced on his stomach, she sat straight up and enjoyed the feeling of him filling her while his hands moved up and down her body.

"Tell me what you thought about," she said, her face a tad flushed.

He hesitated. Because while he needed her to know, it felt desperately private and sad. It hardly occurred to him that she had thoughts about _him_ that she used to fend off the darkness.

He took a very deep breath and focused on the snug embrace of her body. "I thought about the first time I saw you in the Avatar State," he said, and her eyebrows lifted in surprise. But to reward him, she lifted herself up and back down onto him, rolling her hips slightly and making his breath leave his body in gasps.

"I had this feeling like everything in the world was ok because you were in it. That everything was complete and that I'd never have to feel unsafe again. At least not _really_. I wasn't even that scared when I was captured because I knew that even if you weren't coming for me, you were exactly where you were needed and that ultimately everything was going to be ok."

Her face registered blank astonishment, even a little pain, but she kept moving, afraid, perhaps, that the words would stop if she did. He gripped her by the hips and rolled against her rhythm, burying himself in her as far as he could go. Her mouth opened, and she fell forward a bit, a hand on his chest to steady her.

"And I thought about that time when we got drunk and passed out on Bolin's bed and he made me clean up Pabu's litter box for a week."

He smiled as he said it, and she felt the laugh bubbling out of her turn into a whimper when she crashed back down on him, the shock sending pleasure up her spine. The storm inside her was building again, and she leaned forward to kiss him while moving a hand down to help take herself to completion a second time.

His tongue explored her mouth, and there was _nnngh _and _mmfh _and the sound of their bodies coming together. He kissed her neck and then kept speaking, his breath hot and wet against the spot behind her ear.

"And I thought about what it was like to do this with you because I never thought I'd be this comfortable with another person. And I thought about the way you smell and taste and the way just looking at you gets me hard sometimes. And I thought about the sounds you make when you come…"

As if on cue, he was cut off by a brief cry that signaled her climax. And then she bit into his shoulder as she rode it out, and he continued to thrust as hard as he could, bursting inside of her at last with a sound that he barely recognized.

And it was in a state of utter post-coital exhaustion that they finally rested. And when they woke, she was hungry. It was in bed, unclothed, slurping noodles into their mouths, that they began the work of rebuilding, separating that which couldn't be mended from what was never broken in the first place.


	4. Postcards

**Postcards**

Note: this is for Tumblr and user pulpofiction, who requested (in her own words) "Any situation post-break up where korra tops the shit out of mako, please."

I decided to break wildly from fanon and imagine a scenario in which they _haven't _actually done the sex at the time of their breakup and they behave like the stupid, awful dorks that they are.

* * *

When Mako opened the closet, he and Korra nearly had to leap out of the way lest they be buried in the deluge of junk that the door had precariously held at bay.

"He lived here for _six months_! How did he wind up with that much stuff?" she shouted, feeling despair wash over and vowing never ever _ever _to make a bet with either brother again, especially when the stakes involved cleaning or packing of any kind.

Mako shrugged. "He keeps everything. We fought about it all the time, but I had to give up on it. As long as he keeps his stuff where I can't see it, I just let it go."

Korra fished a few crumpled slips of paper out of the pile and huffed when she saw that they were three-month old receipts from Narook's. "This is just trash," she said, kicking at what looked to be a broken telephone, its frayed cord attached to no receiver, and a brass turtle-duck blackened with age.

"When you're used to having nothing, sometimes _everything _feels like it has value," Mako said, remembering how Bo's pockets used to sag with the weight of stuff he picked up off the sidewalk or odds and ends he found in a dumpster—broken bits of ceramic, a rusty thimble, wadded up lengths of string, each find always proudly presented to the older brother as if it were a priceless treasure.

"Let's put it all in a pile and burn it. We'll tell him it was an accident." Korra said.

"You've seen Bolin cry, right?"

"Well then _you're _helping me," she insisted, looking hard in his eyes and pointing at the stack of crates she'd promised to fill.

"I've been working all day," he objected. "And besides, _I'm _not the one who tried to drink him under the table. _I _know better." He turned toward the living room only to feel a gust of air blow past him, slamming the door shut, the sound of it echoing off the walls of Bolin's empty bedroom.

"The sooner you help me, the sooner I'll be out of here," she said, pointing to the floor, where she flopped down and started pulling objects out of the pile to sort them into something that resembled order.

To her surprise and satisfaction, he complied, though his face was stony and impossible to read. He poked at the mess with a finger, like he was afraid something might jump out and bite him. Then he pulled over a crate and started carefully selecting items to put inside.

"These are things Bolin would want to keep," he said. "Even though he probably forgot he has them."

Some of the items didn't look like much to Korra—a pair of old shoes that looked too small for either of them—but some she recognized, like the helmet of the younger brother's pro-bending uniform. Mako took supreme care with each object, brushing dust off the surface of the helmet and placing it gingerly in the crate.

The glint of glass caught Korra's eye, and she pushed a few things aside to reveal…

"Ahhh," she said, pulling a bottle of clear rice liquor out of the junk and holding it aloft like a trophy. The label was faded and coming loose from the glass at the corners. But it was unopened.

"Isn't that what got you into this mess in the first place?"

"Maybe if you had some, you'd quit being so fucking critical," she snarked and winced with effort as she twisted the bottle cap.

"You'll need a…nevermind," he said as she worked it free.

"Avatars don't need bottle openers," she said, grinning at him as she tilted the bottle back and took a swig. She grimaced as it went down. "Wow, that's awful. Have some." She thrust it at him, and he tossed back a long swallow, his expression matching hers a second later. Korra took the bottle back and had a second drink, feeling it burn its way down her throat and fog her mind just enough that she minded her chore a little less.

The next thing she picked up was a beat up cigar box, edges chipped and raw like it had been tossed against brick. She frowned when she opened it, seeing only a pile of useless paper. There were torn receipts, napkins with the names of girls on them, an assortment of pro-bending formations crudely drawn onto the backs of leaflets. But then her hands found a folded up piece of newsprint, and she opened it up.

"Hey," she said. "Remember this?" She held it up for him to see, and it was a newspaper photograph of the three of them under the headline "FIRE FERRETS ADVANCE TO THE FINALS."

"Yeah," he said, his face breaking into the first smile she'd seen from him all night. "Seems like a million years ago."

She gently folded it back up and placed it in the stack of things to save. The next thing she pulled out was a glossy photograph, its edges battered, a water stain blurring one of the corners. There was a man and a woman with two little boys, all dressed up, a formal portrait.

"Mako, is this…" she hesitated, and he looked at her questioningly. "Is this you guys?" She didn't say "your family" because when applied to Mako, those words took on a peculiar intimacy. It felt intrusive, presumptuous to say them.

"Yeah," he said. His eyes were a little stony, and she bit at the dead skin on her lip as she flipped the photo back around to look at it. "Your hair is the same," she said, trying to smile the exact right amount and no more.

He reached for it, and she surrendered it. After looking at it closely for a few seconds, the right corner of his mouth crept up. "Yeah, it is," he said.

Korra watched him a few seconds longer than felt comfortable, and words were floating in her mind from a pledge she'd made to him when they'd first gotten together—that she would be his family now too and so would _her _family, and Asami and Tenzin and Pema and all the air kids. It was a long time ago.

"You should hang onto it," she said and balked a little when he handed it back to her anyway.

"I don't have to," he said, reaching into the breast of his coat. When his hand emerged, it held an envelope from which he drew a few faded photos, one identical to the one she'd found, though it was in better shape, cared for with a frantic meticulousness like everything else that Mako loved.

There were a couple of other photographs, one of him and Bolin and Toza in their new uniforms, Toza's frowning face a stark contrast to the beaming, youthful countenances that flanked him. And stuck to the back of that one was…

"Oh shit, hold on," he said, grabbing for the photos. It was too late. She pulled them apart and saw her own face staring back at her, smiling out from behind a wooden cutout. Not quite knowing what to think, she held onto it for a second, and his face looked pained, embarrassed.

"You kept this?" she asked, her neck feeling hot in a not altogether unpleasant way.

"Yeah," he said. "It's not uh…it doesn't mean…"

She tenderly placed it back in the envelope and handed it back to him. "It was a good memory," she said, smiling comfortingly at him. "I think it's nice."

A blush crept all the way up from his collar to his hairline as he took his little packet back. "Thanks," he said.

As a gesture of good will she passed the bottle over to him, an offer to wipe away whatever awkwardness had just passed between them. He drank gratefully, and so did she.

An hour or two passed in comfortable silence, both of them filling crates and stacking obvious junk in a pile to be taken away, the not so obvious stuff in a heap for Bolin to sort through later. Korra placed the bottle between them, and every once in a while, one of them would take a drink, a gentle buzz wrapping itself snugly around their brains.

They worked their way through the mess on the floor before they could actually reach in and touch the back of the closet. When Korra did so, she pulled out another box, this one made for a man's hat, and what she found inside made her stop and put a hand instinctively over her mouth.

"What?" he asked, looking quizzically at her face. He had removed his coat, and he was slouching against a wall, long legs crossed in front of him.

"Uhhhh, look I guess," she said. In the box was a set of postcards. The top one showed a nude woman arranged artfully on a sofa, her breasts milky white, belly soft as it curved down to a thatch of dark hair, a stark contrast to what was obviously a light-colored wig on her head.

Mako flushed a little when he took the box in his hands and got a look inside. "Huh," was all he said, his eyes a little too glassy as he looked at the naked woman.

"You like that sort of thing?"

"Well, she's not really my type…" he quipped, and she snatched to box away, giving him a look of mock disapproval.

She picked the top card up out of the box to see the next one, her curiosity getting the better of her. "Is this one your type?" She held it up, and it was a picture of a woman in traditional Earth Kingdom dress, except the top of it was cut off the reveal her breasts. Her hair was dark, arranged in several elaborate buns on top of her head.

He laughed when he saw it, letting his head fall back against the wall with a _thud_. When he righted himself, he just shrugged, "Meh. I should think it would be pretty obvious what my type is."

She dared to meet his eyes as he said this, and his gaze burned her from the inside out. She bit her lip and flipped to the next postcard, then the next. It was an impressive collection, each woman dressed with what seemed to be quite particular care, each scene arranged to appeal to a certain fantasy. Some were against painted landscape backdrops. Some were arranged in luxurious boudoirs. Some women were nude, while others were in varying degrees of undress, robes pushed aside to reveal a nude thigh or a breast.

"All in all, it's a pretty tasteful collection, I guess."

Mako picked up the postcards as she discarded them, staring at each thoughtfully. "He always has thought of himself as a connoisseur."

Further down, the postcards included men with the women. In the first one she found, a handsome nude man with a broad chest held an equally naked woman in his lap, and they were feeding each other strawberries from a dish. "Well how romantic," she said, throwing it at him.

He laughed at it, but the chuckle was cut short when she just stopped and said, "Whoa."

"What?" he asked, sitting up straight and leaning toward her. Her face was a little red, and he could tell that she didn't really want to show him. He scooted across the floor and grabbed at her arm as she tried to cover it. "Wow," he said once he saw. It was a woman down on all fours, her breasts pendulous and her face thrown up in an expression of ecstasy as a man held her from behind.

Korra picked it up and set it aside, hoping to find something they could laugh at this time, but it was a naked woman sitting on a chair while a man pleasured her with his mouth. Her face got hot, and she took a swig from the bottle, feeling his presence a little too acutely.

"Well she seems happy at least," he said, trying to break the tension. She laughed somewhat appreciatively, but her nerves were still raw and humming, a touch of unwanted arousal pricking between her legs.

"You may be used to this sort of thing, City Boy, but it might shock you to learn that the likes of this did not make its way into the White Lotus compound."

"No?" he said teasingly. "You don't have any secrets like this?"

She refused to tell him about the books that she kept hidden under her mattress or the marathon sessions she'd put in thinking about him naked and under her. She winced as images came into her mind unbidden, and it provoked him.

"Don't act judgmental. We did plenty of …stuff…when we were together."

It was a daring challenge, and she looked back at him to see that his ears were as red as hers felt.

"I don't think we did this," she said, holding up a postcard of a couple in a position that seemed anatomically impossible.

He frowned at it. "Why would anyone _want _to?"

A couple of beats went by, and she felt like she had put the wrong idea in his head.

"I'm not an idiot," she said. "I do know about things."

"I _know _you know."

"Yeah, but do you, like, know that I _know _know."

"I haven't the slightest idea what…" he trailed off, looking at her with a mix of confusion and amusement. Because the terms they had used to discuss sex—even when they were together—had rarely gotten much more sophisticated. There had been a _lot_ of touching and rubbing and a few orgasms and a couple of brief, metaphor-laden discussions of a sexual future that had been cut short by their precipitous breakup.

She stared at his stupid face, which was infuriatingly smug, like he had one over on her. And on an impulse, she leaned forward and bit at his mouth, her lips dragging his lower one in between them before meeting them full on in a wet, demanding kiss.

It had been an act completely devoid of thought, and when she pulled away and looked into his stunned eyes, she was mortified.

"Fuck," she almost shouted, pushing off of the floor and jumping to her feet. "Shit. I'm sorry."

"I…It's ok," he said hurriedly, looking up at her a little desperately, trying to rearrange himself in a way that would conceal what the contact of her mouth had done to him.

"I shouldn't have…it was just…"

"It's ok," he repeated. "Things were…um. If you hadn't done that I probably would have?" He hadn't meant it to come out like a question, but the pitch of his voice raised hysterically toward the end.

When she turned around, he looked like he'd been punched in the gut. "Seriously?" she asked skeptically. He always seemed so good at holding it together. If anyone had asked her directly, she'd have said he didn't feel that way about her any more.

"Seriously." His eyes were earnest, but guarded. And she stayed where she was, cracking her knuckles. They were quiet for whole seconds that seemed like weeks, both hoping the longing didn't show.

"I'm gonna go," she finally said.

"No," he countered a little too insistently. He picked up the stack of postcards and tossed them back in the box, shoving it away like _it _was _clearly _to blame. "Stay, ok? Just come over here and sit."

She let her shoulders relax slightly and did as he said. "We don't have to talk about it," he reassured, the lump in his throat bobbing slowly as he spoke. His hand fell over hers in reassurance, but it made her tense. He felt it and pulled away quickly.

A weary sigh escaped her, and she put her head in her hands, elbows braced against her knees. "This is _awkward_, ok? I still feel…_things_, you know? It's confusing."

His heart lifted a little when she said that, and knowing it would probably just make things worse, he gently grabbed her chin and forced her to look at him. Then something inside of him fractured, and he felt himself compelled forward, drawn to the curve of her lips as they pouted back at him.

The kiss was soft, impossibly sweet. Their mouths felt familiar to each other, and they found by memory the precise perfect way that they fit together. She brought a hand to his cheek and felt his lips part further, making room for her tongue to brush against his.

He pushed her hair out of the way and drew her closer. The momentum carried them until he was on his back, and she was resting against his chest with one knee in between his legs. Pulling away from his lips, she made a path down his throat, letting her instincts take over as a want long repressed fought its way to the surface.

"I love you," he whispered into her hair, his breath sticky and warm.

"Yeah, I know," she responded, not daring to think beyond the words they'd said when she'd ended it for good.

"No," he said, pushing her shoulders back to force her to look at him. "I mean, I _love _you."

The seriousness in his eyes startled her, and she had to wait for a second while her brain tried to hammer together a suitable response. In the end, the best she came up with was to straddle his body and pull her shirt over her head, falling back over him to whisper, "Yeah, I still love you like that too." Their mouths pressed together again, and this time, his hands wandered all over her, gripping her thighs and hips and breasts in turn, the feel of it all so familiar and so new at the same time. The fact that it had ended once meant it could end again, which meant that they had better make the most of whatever time they had, and so it was with a freshly discovered sense of urgency that they pressed deeper and deeper into each other's mouths. And it was with a want far more painful and vivid than any she'd yet experienced that she rolled her hips downward and reveled in the friction between their bodies.

"Fuck," Mako cursed as she ground into him particularly hard, his breathing sharp and vaguely savage.

"Are we going to do this?" she asked, thinking she had never desired anything her entire life as much as she wanted to feel what it was like to finally have him inside her.

"Hold on a second," he said and pushed her hips off of him gently. She rolled away and watched anxiously, her bare breasts rising and falling with each protracted gasp as he picked through one of the crates and found what he was looking for.

"Thank you, Bo," he said, holding up a box of what seemed to be condoms. She smiled up at him from the floor and watched as stripped down to his underwear, the long lines and hard edges of his body popping into view and making her blood feel hot.

Dropping back to the ground heavily, he dug a hand into her hair and brought her mouth to his. Then he trailed long wet kisses down her neck and the rest of her body as she leaned backward onto her elbows. As she watched him move, a hand massaging his scalp, she thought of all the reasons why they hadn't worked, but then he finally did something he'd never done before. With both hands, he tugged her pants and underwear down in a single swoop and let his mouth hover just a centimeter from her sex, and she thought _fuck it. _They could work out the details later.

"Tell me if this feels good," he said, and his fingers parted her flesh as his tongue lightly brushed against her .

"It sort of tickles," she said, her toes curling toward the floor.

"Sorry," he responded, his breath hot wafting over her as he turned his head to place a sucking kiss on her thigh.

This time, he tasted her with more purpose, the blade of his tongue pulling heat across hercunt as he licked from bottom to top. She moaned deep and low, and her thighs involuntarily came together around his head. He forced them back down, opening her up further, and she moved her hips out of rhythm with his mouth, trying to control the rate at which the tension built inside her.

"Use your fingers," she told him, and this was a technique he was familiar with. Continuing to trace random patterns across her with his tongue, he pushed one finger halfway into her and let it rest there.

"Dammit," she moaned, her head digging backward into the floor as she clenched her eyes shut. He twisted the finger inside her and drew it out slowly, plunging back in deeper and more forcefully when she protested. The sounds that came out of her were feral, and he listened patiently to her demands for "more" and "faster" and "like that" until her hips rose off the floor and he heard the sound of her orgasm.

When he wiped off his mouth and came back up to kiss her, she tackled him, her body pinning him to the floor because now _she _wanted to try. Every muscle in his torso responded to her touch as she kissed a track down his chest and abdomen, licking the line that divided his middle and met the thatch of hair poking out of his briefs.

She tugged down and watched his cock spring out, long and hard and darker than the rest of him. She licked her palm like he'd shown her in their time together before and wrapped her hand around the shaft. He watched expectantly as it moved downward, and then she wrapped her lips around the top, and he lost all the strength in his body. He was boneless, helpless as she worked him, even when her teeth accidently scraped against the ridge on the underside and he had to bite back a yell.

"Korra, I'm gonna come if you keep this up," he said desperately.

"Good," she whispered.

"I want to be inside you." His voice was begging, and she smiled as she pulled back, pleased and satisfied to hear him say it.

She pulled a condom from the box and positioned it at the tip of his cock. She knew in theory how it was supposed to work, but he had to help her—though he felt like he could barely move—as she rolled it on and positioned herself above him.

As she sank down onto the tip, a soft cry escaped both of their mouths. Her hands clutched at his body, nails digging in just a little on his ribs, and then she lowered herself, so slow he thought it might kill him, until she was all the way, her bottom resting on the tops of his thighs.

It was a fullness unlike anything she had imagined, and once she felt used to it, she tried moving her hips back and forth, feeling the pressure change as she did so. Then she pulled off of him and sank back on, and his leg kicked out as he moaned forlornly. She flexed around him and did it again, and this time his hands rose to hold onto her hips, gripping her fiercely and thrusting back up to meet her.

They did this slowly a few more times, and she felt the urge to speed up. She fucked him as hard as she could manage, watching his stomach muscles clench as he tried to keep himself at bay. Her hand reached down to touch herself, and as she slammed back onto him, the knot inside of her unraveled. "I'm coming again," she said, her voice distant, and he pulled her back down for a kiss. Her thighs shook, and she kept moving as fast as she could until everything in her was spent. He met her thrust for thrust, and then his hips lurched upward, and his cock pulsed inside her.

When the shaking stopped, she lifted off of him and was pulled back onto his chest, her hair loose and spilling over his shoulder as he kissed the top of her head and absently stroked her back.

"Tell me we get to do that again," she said breathlessly, her eyes closed and her ears till humming with the sound of her own blood .

He laughed, his mind clear and untroubled, content with the feel of her weight on top of him and feeling for the first time in a while like he was exactly where he was supposed to be. "Pick a postcard," he said. "I'll try _all _of them if you want me to."


	5. Aesthetics

**Aesthetics**

Note: for the anon who requested "Mako or Korra getting insecure and/or jealous and the other one has to convince them how attractive they really are."

This was actually a tough challenge (which makes it a good prompt) because I don't think possessiveness or insecurity are traits that suit either of them very well and because this kind of thing can head in troubling or clichéd directions in a hurry. But this idea sprang into my head last night, and I woke up still excited about it, so here it is.

* * *

The sky was pale pink outside the window, a non-committal sort of color that peeked up behind the gray shapes of the buildings that flanked the apartment. It was an indolent, unindustrious sort of dawn that made staying underneath the sheets seem even more reasonable than usual. But Korra was compelled forward anyway, out of the sultry cocoon of his bed—which was less a bed than a mattress raised off the ground by a slapped-together metal frame—and onto the cold floor.

The sheets tangled around her naked legs as she tried to get to her feet, the tenderness between her thighs coming to life once more as she moved, reminding her of their frenzied efforts to continue learning one another's bodies—him all over her, around her, inside her, the stifled screams that rocked through her as he'd brought her to completion not once but thrice with the ardent persistence of his mouth and his hands and that part of him she'd jealously decided would only ever belong to her. She looked back to see him laying on his side, his lower arm flung out in front of him like he had fallen asleep reaching for her, his face impossibly soft. It was her second time waking up with him, but the look of him all collapsed in on himself like this still gave her pause. He'd been all hard edges and boundary lines when they'd first met, and now any time she wanted, she could summon the memory of him melting underneath her, his face all open and pleading. When they made love, she never shut her eyes. It would never have even occurred to her to do so.

Turning away from him, she began a search for her clothing. Her pants and underwear were right at the foot of the bed, and she pulled them on, the rustle of fabric briefly disturbing the untroubled silence of the room. Her bindings were strewn across the floor, and she half-suspected that her shirt and pelt were in the living room after a quick look around failed to reveal them.

With one end of the bandage secured to her body, she began wrapping her breasts back up, keeping it loose this time for comfort. Her concentration was broken when she heard him stir. "Come back to bed," he groaned sleepily.

She laughed softly. "I've got to get back before someone figures out I'm gone." Her breasts secure, she walked past the dresser and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She frowned. One tie was still holding on for dear life, but otherwise her hair was a mess. She picked a comb up off the dresser and started running it through the tangles, noting with displeasure the rather oily sheen of her skin and the dark circles that might give her away.

"Are you really worried about that?" he asked, and it occurred to her that keeping up appearances was probably never high on the list of pressures that impacted his life. And she pondered the question hard for a second, wondering why it seemed to matter to her.

"This is new for me," was the non-answer she finally arrived at.

"It's new for me too." In the reflection, she saw him prop up his head on an elbow, and the burn of his gaze on her half clothed figure made her suddenly self-conscious. The comb caught on a tangle, and she winced as she pulled it free.

"I'm not keeping you a secret," she said. "But you haven't seen Tenzin's face whenever he can tell that I've been making out with you. If he got wind of this…"

He chuckled and let his head fall back on the pillow, his eyes still locked on her as she continued to work at her coarse, dark hair, arranging it into something resembling order.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she asked, his scrutiny still oddly unsettling to her.

"You're nice to look at," he responded.

She snorted and secured her wolftail on top of her head.

"No really," he said, and she turned away from the mirror to face him. "You're stunning."

It was a compliment she wasn't sure how to take because while she'd never considered herself _un_attractive, "stunning" was a word that she didn't think applied to her. The same with "beautiful" and "pretty." "Stunning" was Asami Sato, and while Korra was capable of appreciating it when she saw it, it was something she had never even aspired to be. She was Korra, and Korra was a thing built for battle, not for aesthetics. So she stared back at him, hands on her hips, and challenged him to take it back.

"You don't like it when I tell you that?" he asked.

She didn't want to say "no," exactly, but…

"C'mere," he said, sitting up and holding a hand out to her.

"I need to get going."

"Soon. Just come here."

She reluctantly obeyed, stepping forward as he shifted across the bed to meet her. As he did so, she got a glimpse of him coming out from underneath the sheet, the sharp line of his hip bone pointing downward toward his cock, which rested in a semi-hard state of apathetic morning arousal against his right thigh. Catching her hand, he pulled her toward the side of the bed, sitting up and placing both feet on the floor so that she stood between his legs. Arms crossed over her body, she stood above him and gave him a smirk that asked _what are you doing, you idiot?_

"Just trust me, ok?" he begged, placing a hand on her elbow.

She relaxed her posture in a sign of surrender and allowed him to turn her around so that she once more faced the mirror. Her own image greeted her again, and his face peeked out around the side of her.

"See? Gorgeous."

This word was even more absurd than "stunning." She let her head fall back in a raucous laugh, and in retaliation, he gripped her by the hips and pulled her down so that she was sitting between his legs, his arms loosely wrapped around her. "You're going to stay here until you tell me I'm right."

"Mako…"

"No, really. Look at yourself."

She did, and she saw only what she was used to seeing—the dimples at her collarbones, the bulge of her shoulders, the swoop of her tricep muscles as they curved over her arm bones and met the contours of her biceps. She saw the rise and fall of her covered breasts, their convexity meeting the jut of her rib cage and the hard lines of her abdomen. It was a good body, a strong body, but she couldn't see much beyond its utilitarian features.

"You were doing this thing a second ago," he said, seeing that she still wasn't getting it. He reached up and pulled away the hair tie that was holding her wolftail in place.

"Hey," she protested as her thick mane cascaded over her shoulders.

"I like your hair like this," he said, running his fingers through it. "But to prove my point, just pretend like you're putting it up again."

She hesitated because _this was so stupid_, but ultimately obliged and swept her fallen hair up with her hands to gather it on top of her head.

"Like that," he said, and she froze in place. "Your face looks all concentrated, and you do that thing with your lips."

She noted the way her brow furrowed and her lips pursed together in a pout.

"And your arms. I like your arms." He ran one hand up her side and traced the shape of her muscles, the crease that formed where her pectoral met her shoulder. His grip was firm and warm with sleep, and she saw his eyes close for a second as he pressed his lips to her neck.

"Yeah, I think I know which parts of me you like," she said, smirking at him in the mirror. He smiled back, and let his hand smooth over her chest as their arms lowered. She turned her head to find his lips, kissing him serenely. Their tongues brushed together just slightly before he pulled away.

"You don't like them?" he asked, mouthing down her neck to her shoulder.

"I never really thought about it before." She watched his head move across her shoulder in the mirror, his hair pure disorder. And then she felt his fingers nimbly unfasten her bindings. Just as she was about to protest, they cascaded down her body, leaving her bare from the waist up. The tracks his fingers traveled left tiny bumps along her flesh, and she felt the suggestion of a shiver move up her spine as his hands pushed the fabric away and came up to feel her breasts. His skin was so much lighter than hers, and in the soft dawn light, it was almost glowing.

"I think you're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," he said, and for the first time, she noticed how the light from the window threw contrasting shadows across their bodies and highlighted the curvatures. Mako's hand cupped one breast from underneath while he continued kissing her shoulders. His thumb swept up to rub her nipple, and she saw how it responded, how it shriveled and peaked, how her entire breast seemed to lift in acknowledgement. She'd seen it happen before, but when it happened underneath his hand, it was different. Maybe even beautiful.

Korra sighed and reached her arm back to run her fingers through his hair, enjoying the wet softness of his lips popping against her skin, the feel of his nose as it explored the place behind her ear. "Mako," she whispered and sank back against him a little, because her chest was starting to feel heavy against his hands, and breaths were becoming more difficult to draw. The pressure was gathering in her thighs, a gentle ache that bloomed outward from her sex, and she pulled his hand to her lower stomach so that his fingers touched the waistband of her pants, a signal that she hoped he took.

But instead of simply reaching into her clothing, he put his hands on her waist and forced her to rise before tugging her pants and underwear down her long legs, dark skin coming into view under his touch. She shivered a little; the chill in the room was still acute. Retracing his path, he palmed up from her knees to her thighs, his mouth coming forward to let his teeth dig just slightly into the skin on her ass and then smooth over the hurt with his tongue.

She saw the flush gather in her chest, skin becoming slightly rosy as her arousal was spurred. And in the subtle lift of her eyebrows and the tensing of her leg and stomach muscles, she thought she saw for a moment what he was talking about.

Once again, he gripped her roughly and made her sit between his legs. His hands came to her thighs and divided them, spreading them wide so that she could see what he'd spent most of the previous night studying, a part of herself she knew better with her fingers than with her eyes. It was dark red, furrowed and ruffled, and surrounded by mossy black, and she watched—riveted—as two of his fingers moved down there and came back looking slick and wet.

His eyes found hers in the mirror. He brought his fingers up to his mouth and savored the taste he found there. "Watch yourself," he demanded. And she watched. She watched the color move from her chest to her neck as the heat and her pleasure rose. She watched the movement of his hands, his fingers deftly circling her clit and then moving slightly underneath her to push inside, demonstrating just how well he'd learned the lessons she'd been teaching him about how hard to press, how fast to move. And she watched the way her muscles twitched as she rocked in time with him. And it was stunning, she thought. They were stunning _together._

With one arm wrapped around her, he lifted her up onto the tops of his thighs to get better access, and she felt the insistent pressure of his erection against her buttocks. He was working away at her clit, so she shimmied her hips back against him, letting the tip of it brush against her. And she saw him nearly lose it in the mirror, his face contorting with pure, unbridled want. She ground against him just a little harder, and he moaned, and so she leaned forward and angled her hips, watching her breasts come together as she braced herself on his knees, and the tip of his cock slipped just inside of her. And they both nearly died, their breathing coming in whimpers.

She looked back to see his stricken face and pulled off of him, the loss of fullness making her bite her lip so hard she could taste blood. Reaching over to the nightstand, she huskily whispered, "Lie back." And then she kneeled on the bed over him, her front still toward the mirror, him resting on his elbows and gazing at the back of her, and she rolled the condom down over him.

"Keep watching," he said, though the command sounded more like begging than it had before. And she did. She watched herself sheath over him gradually, her breasts sinking as a little air left her body with each inch of him that she took inside of her. A strangled sound came up from behind her, and she felt his hands smooth over her backside as she began to rock on top of him, feeling the subtle alterations in pressure with each angle. Then she rose and fell on him several times, and he dug in with his nails.

"Shit, Korra. I'm close already," he confessed a few minutes later, his voice choked and desperate. In the mirror, she looked down to see him moving in and out of her, and she reached a hand down to touch herself, tapping at her clit and firing herself on the sight of their bodies joining. Her lips were parted, and sweat was forming on her brow, and then she felt it take her, and her mouth fell completely open. She crashed back onto him, feeling him in the deepest parts of her, and the muscles in her stomach and thighs quivered visibly. He followed right after her in seconds, and she leaned forward to brace herself on his legs as he thrust back up into her and came apart.

It took full minutes to recover, and when she did, she lifted off him and turned around to find him an utter mess. His face shone with sweat, and his pale skin was blotchy red all the way from his face to his ribs. Collapsing next to him, she littered kisses on his face and ran her fingers through his disheveled hair. "I think I get it," she whispered before sealing her mouth over his, feeling his limp arm come alive to wrap around her and draw her flush against his bare body. "I get it," she said again. Because his beauty was in the way that she loved him. And with hers, perhaps, it was the same.


	6. The Art of Letting Go

**The Art of Letting Go**

Note: for the anon who wanted, "(post break-up) A drunken Mako taps on Korra's window in the middle of the night, needing to be with her after he stumbles upon the his parents' case file."

This is what happens when you send me the sad prompts, folks. I wanted to do something a little less straightforward, and it became this really intense (and probably incoherent) reflection on the nature of grief. And uuuuuugh. I'm so sorry.

* * *

It would come at him, sometimes, from the most unexpected directions. Smells, in particular, brought the images roaring back—something that reminded him of his father's scent, all grass and fresh spring dirt, a waft of someone's cooking finding its way into the hall from another apartment. And all of a sudden, he would be seven years old again, and heat would start to build inside his stomach, and he would have to close his eyes for several long seconds and find his breath.

Someone—some idiot who was trying to be helpful no doubt—had told him grief was a process. And back then Mako had imagined it as a line—maybe a curving or arcing one—but a line nonetheless, extending outward from the spot where he stood toward some inevitable vanishing point. But that was bullshit, of course. As he discovered, grief was a cycle. Like everything else, it was reborn over and over again, a reliable fixture in his life even though it was recalled to existence in the strangest places and the least likely ways.

The times when it _didn't _come back were as surprising as the times when it did. He wore his father's scarf every day, but at some point it had ceased being a familial totem and served instead as a symbol of his own survival. He could rely on it to make him feel strong rather than sad.

But what he never expected to feel was nothing. And yet that is precisely what he felt as he held the file in his hands, fingers smoothing over paper that was ever so slightly showing its age. It had been idle—perhaps morbid—curiosity that brought it into his grasp. The file he had been looking for was from the same year, and his thumb had simply wandered forward a couple of months and found the date and then the name and then he was looking at it. There were the names and a couple of photos. And there was the statement he'd given the police. And as if from a distance he could see himself sitting in a blank room, a female officer coaxing the details out of him.

Mako could summon every second of that awful day to play back for him like one of Varrick's movers, and as he did so now what shocked him was its failure to shock. Where a voice on a street that sounded kind of like his mother's could send him cascading back into sorrow, the bare, brutal facts of it all no longer seemed to have that power. And that disturbed him.

Closing the file and putting it back in its place, he left the storage room and attempted an inventory, a topography even, of the void inside of him. All his other work was swiftly forgotten as he tried to decide if it was resolution that he felt. He didn't think so. There was no completion, no comfort in it. It was just a nothing that collected inside and seeped through his skin. Grief would have been preferable. Grief was _something_. Even when it sunk its teeth into him at the least opportune moments, it had reminded him that he was alive. And even if he hated himself sometimes for living, there was at least sensation in that.

He sought sensation in the bottom of a glass. And then another. And another. Bolin looked on in slightly worried confusion. Because Mako had never been a big drinker, clinging as he always did to control.

"Are you in a race with yourself or something?" the younger brother asked.

"Something like that," Mako answered. But he didn't know how to tell him that it was _loss_ of control he was seeking, that maybe in the dulling of his faculties he'd find release, that maybe the numbness would break up and allow sensation to come spilling over him. Not feeling much like talking, he let Bolin prattle on about what was next for the movers with Varrick on the lam. A set of unasked questions flitted through his brain—_Bo, do you ever think about…does is ever bother you that… _He didn't know how to ask them. Bolin's health and happiness had never seemed worth the risk of revealing the pitch-black awfulness that sometimes crept into the older boy's bones.

"You should go see Korra's new place. It's nice," Bo said when his monologue took another tangent. And Mako supposed he must have made a face because Bolin suddenly looked abashed, like he'd realized a mistake.

Korra's name hung between them, and Mako could taste it in his mouth, a sudden swell of something breaking through the alcohol haze.

"Sorry," Bolin said reflexively. "I know you, uh…" he hesitated. "But you left things on good terms, right?"

"Yeah," was his only response. It was true in the sense that there had been no screaming and fighting this time, nothing thrown across the room. But how could it really be called "good" when the sound of her name made that hot, sick feeling pool inside his belly?

"What's she been up to?" he asked, leaning into the hurt of it, letting the loss of her flood him as the numbness started to recede. And as Bolin told him everything, he remembered what she smelled like, what it felt like to let her hair down and run his fingers through it. It was a dangerous game, seeing how far he could shift the equilibrium of his emotions back toward actually feeling stuff without getting overwhelmed. But he had always prided himself on his ability to keep it all in check, to feel _just enough _to stay alive without ever actually letting anyone know about it. And the hurt was so good this time, so sharp, so acute that he just kept asking questions.

…

Korra had never been a great sleeper, and at 2 am, she was still lying awake, the emptiness of her new apartment unnerving her. Living alone, she thought, was an experience she needed to have. And while the psychic distance from family, mentors, and ex-boyfriends was refreshing, she also felt isolated, somewhat cut off from the forces that had kept her life in motion for as long as he could remember.

She kicked off the covers and flipped over the pillow one more time, trying to get comfortable. But the room felt stifling, the air around her stagnant. And so she pushed off from the bed and went to the window, kicking a box out of the way and shoving curtains aside so that she could push it open. And when she did, she saw a face she hadn't realized she'd been wanting to see.

His skin was ghostly pale in the moonlight, and he was swaying on his feet, looking around with bloodshot eyes like he didn't quite know where he was.

"Mako, are you drunk?" she hissed. And his head snapped toward her, eyes widening with surprise, like he hadn't expected to see her.

He rubbed at his face with the back of his hand. "I guess," he said.

"Are you looking for me?"

"I don't…" he blinked three times like he expected her to disappear each time he opened his eyes. "Is this your place?"

"Yeah…"

"I was going home and then I just wound up here?"

He was scaring her. She'd never seen him this untethered. "Go around the corner to the door, and I'll let you in."

As he did so, she started making tea and dug some of the dumplings Pema had sent with her that evening out of the icebox.

When she opened the door, he almost fell inside. She pulled him by the hand toward a bare wooden table and made him sit, setting the plate of dumplings in front of him.

"What happened?" she asked as she got back to making the tea.

He was silent, his body slumped forward, collapsing in on itself. She was resisting, for the moment, the instinct to run her fingers over his scalp, to drape herself over him in comfort.

"Did you and Bolin have a fight?" she tried again, trying to think of what could possibly prompt Mako of all people to take a bath in liquor and then show up like someone's lost pet outside her window at 2 in the morning.

"Nah," he said hoarsely, almost moaning.

"Did you and Asami…"

"No." he replied so loudly and emphatically that it startled her. "There's nothing…happening there."

In spite of herself, Korra was relieved, satisfied even. She sat a steaming cup in front of him and settled into a chair, drawing bare knees up against her chest and resting her chin on them. "Then what?"

He sighed, and after a few sips of tea, he seemed a little more like himself. "I saw something at work today. Something to do with my parents, and…"

She lowered her knees and leaned forward, expecting more. He didn't offer anything else.

"It's ok to feel sad sometimes, Mako." It was a weak consolation and she knew it, even without his eyes staring at her darkly, telling her there was something she just wasn't getting and probably never would. It was a barrier between them that she never knew quite how to break, the taciturn way in which he internalized his grief and kept it hidden from her like he somehow thought it protected her.

He stared at her hand, lying limply on the table, and then to her surprise, he gently placed his own over it, fingertips delicately brushing over the bones of her wrist. It was an action that made her throat suddenly seize up and tears gather behind her eyes. But she held everything still and concentrated on the warmth of his palm resting over her knuckles, trying to will herself into emotional stasis.

"I miss you," he whispered. And it sounded almost like he was talking to a ghost, like he still didn't know where he was or that she was real.

"I'm right here," she responded, so softly that the words seemed to stop an inch from her lips. _And you treat me like I don't exist_.

He wasn't meeting her eyes, but she felt pain radiating off of him. She wondered if it was a pain that approximated hers. If it was the same as what she felt in the awful moments of early morning when she had to remember all over again that they were broken up. And even though she knew he was out there in the world, it was a separation that made her wonder if this was what it felt like when someone died. And it was a grief that felt truly, unspeakably private, a silent, invisible companion that followed her everywhere she went. She was alone with it always, even when he was right there in the room with her.

Her head started to ache with the effort of staying composed. She flipped her hand over so that she could return his pressure. And she was surprised when he grasped it and pulled her forward, forcing her to stand up and move closer until he was wrapping his arms around her waist, burying his face in the front of her shirt.

Korra let the tears escape from the edges of her eyes and moved her hands through his hair. And she didn't even care that she was wearing nothing but an old shirt and a pair of shorts, that his head was just below her unbound breasts. What she felt for him in that moment wasn't erotic exactly, but it was loving and it was painful in the best possible way. She felt slightly less alone with his hands on her even though for all she knew, he was grabbing at specters.

"You sleep on the bed," she offered. _And I'll sleep on the couch. _She helped him off with his shoes and jacket, and she nearly fell apart as she watched him stretch out over her blankets, knowing that in another life, she'd be about to follow after him, naked and wet and wanting.

As she looked back across the room, the hand-me-down sofa felt about a thousand miles away, a space of lonely exile. So she didn't pull away when he grabbed her hand one more time. And she let him pull her down next to him. There was no embrace, no declaration. He just continued to hold her hand as his breathing slowed and his face relaxed and she watched him fall asleep.

…

She was the first to wake up, the first to see the sunlight fall through the windows and create a pool of shadow in the concavity of his chest and stomach. It would have been easy, so easy, to fill that space up with her body and to let whatever might happen happen. But she forced herself out of the bed and got busy throwing food together.

As she put the kettle on the stove, she heard him stir, and then she turned to see him sit bolt upright on the bed. His head jerked back and forth, his eyes full of blank panic as he took in his surroundings. And then he saw her, and she felt his eyes appraise her, take the full measure of what she was wearing, and…

"Oh no. Oh no oh no no no no no." He covered his face with both palms, and she felt her defenses start to mount inside of her.

"What, Mako?" Her voice was a little too sharp.

"Korra…I…we shouldn't have…I'm so, so sorry." It was such a strange thing to say, too intense for what little had actually taken place the night previous.

"What exactly do you remember about last night?" She folded her arms over her chest, staring back at him as she made some guesses about what was going on inside his head.

"Didn't…didn't we…" He gestured at her state of undress and then the mess of her bed.

"Didn't you come to my apartment all shit faced and fall asleep on my bed?"

He looked at her with eyebrows meeting in the middle of his forehead. "We didn't…"

"I don't think you could have even if you'd wanted to."

For no reason that she could explain to herself, she was furious with him, her neck growing hotter the longer she looked at him, tears of rage welling up behind her eyes. Because he didn't just look sorry, he looked _disgusted._

"Korra, I…"

"It was something to do with your parents and you missing me or something, but you didn't really want to talk." Her voice was firm, but she felt the need to create an escape for herself so as not to break down in front of him. "You help yourself to whatever. But _I'm_ going to go take a shower, and if the thought of something happening between us is _really _that horrifying to you, then I'll thank you not to show up here in the middle of the night again. Tell Bolin to keep you on a leash or something."

His mouth was still hanging open as she turned and stomped into the bathroom, letting the door slam behind her.

…

Mako stared at that door for a long time before pushing up from the bed, gathering his shoes and jacket and leaving, his heart pounding out of sync with the ache in his head. He didn't know what to say. Whatever he had been dreaming had felt so real, the press of her skin against his so tangible that it was difficult to sort it out from whatever fragments of reality he could remember from the previous night. And he was ashamed when he felt the wetness in his underwear and realized, to his utter mortification, that whatever he had felt had really all just been him. That whatever moment of weakness he had experienced, it had been private and desperately secret.

He spent the entire day trying to sort out why she would be angry if nothing happened. And only much later in the day did it occur to him to ask why the thought of something happening had so unhinged him in the first place. Because wasn't that precisely what he wanted with every nerve in his body? Wasn't that the dream that kept him company, the dream he tried to cling to when consciousness returned to him each morning and forced him to say goodbye to a fantasy?

It was these questions and a desperate need to make amends that drove him back to her door with a sack of takeout he hoped would be accepted as a peace offering. He made sure he was showered and shaven this time, that when she saw him he would have his shit together. And he rehearsed a speech in his head about how he didn't know why he'd come to her the previous night but that he hadn't meant to "use" her like that. He would say that he respected her too much to let it ever happen again…even though nothing had really happened.

Her face was set and hard when she opened the door. She took the bag of take out and dropped it on the table. And then she stood with her arms crossed, and her eyes looked as old as the entire world.

Mako cleared his throat and began. "Korra, I respect you. I've been under a lot of stress lately, and I just want you to know that I wouldn't use you like that…"

"Shut up," she said, cutting him off, her face contorted in ways he didn't recognize.

"Huh?"

"Tell me why you're really here." It was a clearly a challenge. One that he was unprepared to face.

"I'm not following."

"You're so full of shit," she hissed at him, and she took two steps closer so that he had to look down to meet her eyes.

They stood like this, at a standoff, for minutes. He tried to break it by resuming his speech. "Korra, I don't want to hurt you…"

She cut him off with her lips mashed against his, fists balling up the fabric of his jacket. He tried to regain his footing, tried to keep up. Her mouth was hot and fierce, and all he could do was open up to her and let his hands come to rest on her waist.

Their lips smacked when Korra pulled off of him. "Tell me this isn't what you came here for," she said. "Tonight _and _last night."

His face felt hot, his brain fogged, and he looked back at her blankly as she searched his eyes in desperation.

"I miss you, you idiot." Her voice started to break, and he let his forehead fall against hers, the words lingering between their lips as she whispered them out. "It hurts, Mako. And I feel it all the time. And last night, you said you missed me, and it felt like I wasn't alone in this. Don't overthink it. Don't be nice. Just for once in your life tell me what you want. If I'm wrong, please, please just say it and let me be."

He felt something inside of him start to slide, start to pitch toward the chaos he craved and yet always held at bay. The fragile equilibrium between feeling nothing and feeling too much started to tip hard toward the latter.

"I want you," he heard himself say before brushing his lips against hers. "I miss you all the time." As their mouths came together again, he brought a hand to her face and pressed against her jaw, prompting her to open her mouth and let his tongue explore.

Her body slackened in his arms, and he backed her up against the table, backside coming to rest against the wood as he slid the full length of himself against her. Their lips parted, and he kissed his way down the line of her neck, lips sucking against her pulse point. Her legs came to wrap around his waist, and he let the dark secret he'd been holding at bay since he'd found the file fill the hollow behind her ear. "Korra, right now I miss you more than I miss my parents. Even though you're right here, it hurts. It hurts like dying. And I want it to stop but I _don't _want it to stop. If that makes any sense."

Her hold on him released, and Mako started to break inside, convinced that he had now said just enough to make himself contemptible to her. Or at least more so than he already was. He closed his eyes and prepared to be sent away, to go home and jerk off to old memories one more time. But he felt her fingers undo the buttons on his jacket, and he surrendered as she pushed it off his shoulders.

"One more time," she whispered, her eyes huge and dilated, the twilight coming through the window throwing the definition in her features into sharp relief.

His hands found the ties to her pelt, and when that was off, he let his palms slide under shirt, the warm softness of her skin wearing the edges off his sadness. "One more time," he whispered back against her lips, though he knew it was a convenient lie they were telling themselves, a promise they'd likely never be able to keep. _And why should we? _he thought, recklessness stealing its way into his blood, firing the arousal that he pressed between her thighs as he lifted her off the table and walked her over to the bed.

Her fingers went to work on his belt as soon as her back hit the mattress. He hovered over her and pulled her hair free, admiring the way her thick mane spilled over white sheets like ink on paper. When she drew him down on top of her, her hands and lips were bruising, pulling the hurt out of his skin and forcing more confessions to follow.

"I love you," he said, as her bindings came free and his mouth hovered over her breast. "I love you, but I'm too fucked up to be with you right now." He heard her choke back something between a sob and a moan as he wrapped his lips around her nipple. Fingers raked through his hair, and when he pulled back, her nails dug in a little. But he made a path down the plane of her stomach, and he made promises to himself, promises he wouldn't speak about how he would try to figure it all out, try to become the sort of person who could be with her and not lose himself.

With a swift tug, he removed her pants and underwear, and when he looked up, he saw that her eyes were too shiny. "Are you ok?" he asked, ready to put a halt to it all if she wasn't.

"I'm fine," she said.

He climbed back onto the bed, kneeling over her and placing his face right next to hers. Her breathing was ragged, and he listened to it closely.

"I'm afraid I'm not ever going to be able to let go of you," she said, finally.

Mako pressed his lips to her forehead, her temples, the side of her jaw. "Then don't." His hand ventured down her body, tracing the curve of her stomach and the sharp edge of her hipbone and then all the way down to the thick thatch of hair between her legs. He parted the flesh there and slipped a finger into the wetness that was forming. Her eyes closed and her head tilted back, so he kept going, venturing further inside while drawing his open mouth across her neck.

His fingers drew the wetness from deep inside her up to her clit, and she rocked her hips in time with his fingers, moans vibrating through the skin on her throat.

"Get inside me," she begged, her voice slender and far away.

"Come for me first," he insisted, watching the creases in her forehead deepen, the shape of her mouth widen as he plunged two fingers inside her and twisted as he drew them back out. Watching her come, for him, was the highest form of worship he knew. It was as much for him as it was for her. His cock was practically pulsing as he hooked his fingers inside her one more time and felt her cunt finally squeeze around the motion. He swallowed her scream in his own mouth and sighed into her as she pulled him down between her legs, his cock practically sliding all the way into her the first time their bodies met.

"Korra, this is…" His mind was starting to go blank, and he fought the instinct to pound into her with everything he had.

"Top drawer," she said, her eyes screwing shut as he pulled out of her and went in search of the condoms. It was convenient to have them close at hand, he thought, though he wondered who she'd been thinking of when she put them there, whether some part of her was prepared to move on and let someone else fill the space he'd left.

If she read that thought in his eyes when he settled back over her body, she gave no hint. And he didn't ask. Because he knew from experience that even if you couldn't quite let go, sometimes it was enough to just keep living.

Korra drew his face down with both hands and kissed him slowly, passionately, her tongue washing over his in waves. He positioned himself at her opening and pushed inside, letting the feel of her wrap around him once again. On the second thrust and the third and the next and the next, her hips came up to meet his, and he felt himself fall deeper in each time. "I love you," he said once more, and tears were blurring the edges of his vision. Her legs rose up to his hips and she drew him inside of her again and again until he buried his face in her hair and let the sensation of it all take him whole. Her hands gripped his ass as her motions became frantic, and he reached down between them to rub against her clit and bring her home. Her orgasm sent him cascading into his, and they held each other tight on the way down, breaths coming short and hot.

And when he lifted off of her, she curled in on herself, her back to him so that he could wrap around her, naked and content with what he had in that moment. There was a time to grieve and there was a time to hold on. Mako buried his face in her neck and memorized her scent, knowing he'd think of this every time he stood too close to her or when it simply came to him on a breeze. And in those moments, the memory of her would be reborn into his life. And reborn again. Until maybe, just maybe, the cycle would bring them back together. Not new exactly. But different. And hopefully better.


End file.
